Yammer Adds Microblogging to Microsoft Outlook & Windows Mobile

Written by Steven Walling / September 14, 2009 1:00 PM / 7 Comments

Yammer is a "Twitter for the enterprise" platform that (to our dismay) won TechCrunch50 last year. A year later the enterprise microblogging space is growing rapidly and Yammer is still moving forward, along with competitors like Socialcast and Socialtext Signals. Today Yammer has announced a pair of Microsoft-centric additions that should be big for business users: an Outlook plug-in and a Windows Mobile app. Outlook is still huge in the enterprise, and a decent working integration with it should be an easier sell than any other kind of desktop access.

Any enterprise microblogging and messaging apps worth their salt have some kind of desktop app by this point. Most of them, including Yammer, have started out with Adobe AIR. The big advantage with AIR is that it's cross-platform. But getting users to start using yet another app on their already cluttered desktop isn't always successful.

With the Outlook plug-in, an extra pane is added alongside the other aspects to Outlook. Users can then message and reply to colleagues, upload attachments, and do basically everything that the AIR app does.

The fundamental difference is that the plug-in takes microblogging to where many enterprise users are already spending a lot of their time. A prime example is how users will be able to CC an email to either their whole Yammer network or to a specific group. As for the other app, Windows Mobile may not be quite as vital as Outlook but it still has a robust presence in the enterprise mobile market.

One of the persistent dilemmmas with standalone apps like Yammer is that (even with desktop and mobile apps) it is never easy to include it in preexisting workflows. It's always harder to sell an enterprise app that doesn't play nice with systems already in place. Integrating Yammer with two Microsoft products that continue to hold mind share in the enterprise world is a step towards solving this problem.

Comments

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I like this move - increasing the accessibility of the service to it's clients is only to increase the barriers to engagement. Think Twitter api: sms, tweetdeck, facebook etc. By shifting to where their clients spend most of their time (ie outlook) they should help stimulate more conversations.

Also as a side note - the combination almost creates a Google Wave kind of experience, but one that organisations will use today.

Posted by: Ben Young | September 14, 2009 4:43 PM

I'd call this a case of Branding FAIL. How could they have passed up naming the service 'Yadda-Yadda'?

Posted by: donmcarthur.com | September 14, 2009 5:22 PM

That is really cool. I read this article and I am pretty much convinced with this application. Also, I am pretty impressed with the features of this application....

Posted by: bluetooth kopfhorer | September 14, 2009 9:29 PM

Smart move by Yammer. With this integration the product is set for huge increase in use. Once adopted it will be interesting to see how much time is spent on email v Yammer.

@jonnop

Posted by: Jonathan Pollinger | September 15, 2009 2:57 AM

Microsoft Outlook is a nexus for communication within most organizations consolidating email, calendar, contacts and tasks information. As social media and social networking become an integrated component of the marketing mix companies will seek tools to manage responses to emails, blog posts, tweets, and form submissions. Integrating Yammer with Outlook is a great idea for easing this consolidation! All the social media outlets should be integrated with Outlook. The next step should be to enable posting (reblogging) to social media outlets from Outlook (the same way an email is crafted and sent today).

Posted by: KellyRShort.com | September 15, 2009 8:26 AM

I thought this would be great, installed the app on Outlook and have to say I am underwhelmed by the functionality. Love the integrated element and it looks great however you can't send an original yam (at all let alone pick a group), which is pretty much a showstopper. Assumed this was built off of or at least modelled after their firefox app which has the same limitations. Also the Invite your Friends feature does not seem to be working (at least for me).

Posted by: G Adams | September 15, 2009 1:13 PM

Well, it is out and even on weddings. Last week top news was
http://www.techradar.com/news/internet/web/wedding-stops-for-twitter-facebook-updates-656152

Well, being out there is important today.

Posted by: Sanovnik | December 12, 2009 2:57 PM